“Do you think we’ll break up?” she asked. I nearly swerved onto the opposite lane.

“What?” I choked. The other cars zip narrowly past us by inches, but she doesn’t notice. “Why are you asking me this?”

“It’s just a random question,” she says, looking out of the window (one of the many she’s fond of asking, even at the most inopportune of times; don’t try to figure it out — there is no logical or linear train of thought to explain it). “So. Do you think we’ll break up?”

She turns to look at me. I think for a bit, turning the question over in my head; I fight down the faint stirrings of terror and answer back eloquently: “I dunno.”

“Come on,” she rolls her eyes at me. “I’m not suggesting we break up. I’m just asking.”

“Well –” I paused, trying to put thoughts to words. “I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“Well, there certainly isn’t anything to suggest we’re headed towards anywhere near a break-up,” I say. “No major disagreements. No discordant set of beliefs. None of those I-can’t-believe-you sort of moments.” I point out matter-of-factly, pleased at my patient, carefully-worded answer.

“Logical as always.” she sighs. We stop at a traffic light.

I turn to regard her with suspicion. “Are you thinking about breaking up with me?”

“No, silly,” she scrunches up her nose at me. “Just a random question.”

“Okay.” Green. The car ambles forward in the peak hour traffic; the skies change and shift in colour  with the setting sun.

“So,” she grins at me. “What would you do if we did break up? Like.. would you get angry? Break some things? Scream at the sun?”

Better to just go along with her questions, I thought. Easier that way.

“Well?” she presses, undaunted by my silence. I took a deep breath.

“I would go into the woods,” I say. “Or some place quiet. Somewhere far away, far from prying eyes, or voices..”

“You and your woods,” she mutters. “But why?”

“I don’t know; when you lose something, don’t you mourn? Don’t you feel some deep need rising up from within to lament, to cry, to — oh, I don’t know — at least do something? It’s not like misplacing a wallet or even a set of keys; it’s a whole lot more than that. Losing you would be missing an arm. Or a leg.  Or more. Maybe breaking up — as in the goodbye-forever, never-again sort of breaking-up, and not like those silly puppy-love games teenagers like to play — is like an amputation; it’s an invisible surgical excision of something precious or cherished, something worth more than life itself..”

“How incredibly dramatic,” she says drily, before I look offended. She quickly smiles, grinning. “Just kidding. Go on.”

“It doesn’t make the pain any less real, I suppose. Some will cry buckets. Some will wander around in familiar places, with a lost, wild look in their eyes; others go about like nothing’s happened, entwining themselves around something numb and hard and cold, like lifeless stone.. until everything unravels and unwinds back at them like a careening whip, and everything shatters.. like I said, we mourn, we grieve, in our own little ways.” I pause, thoughtful.

“Someone’s been thinking about all this a wee bit too much, I think.” she laughs. I shoot her a look.  “Sorry,” she says sheepishly. “What about yourself?”

I ponder her question as the sky over us darkens into evening.

“I’d run,” I tell her. “As fast as I can, in the opposite direction. Drop off the face of the earth. Into a place where no one knows my name. Where no one can recognise my face. Where I can be all alone, in solitude with my phantom pain. I’d want to stop existing — to be forgotten — like the man who wasn’t there.”

“Isn’t that incredibly selfish?”

“What’s selfish is to expect me to behave like a sane, rational human being after losing you.”

“It’s not the end of the world, dear. Life still goes on. You’ll meet new girls who will fascinate and inspire you, and also love you as you deserve; perhaps even more than I ever will. You’ll never know — she might even agree to have a pixie cut.” she smiles (I love pixie cuts, but she’s adamant to never have one, in spite of all my attempts to convince her otherwise — her excuse being that her ‘thick unruly hair’ isn’t suited for it, and would make her look like a thirteen-year-old boy).

“It just doesn’t work like that. Don’t you see? I don’t want these imaginary ‘better’ girls. There’ll always be someone better, in some way or another; there’s only one you. And there’ll never be anyone else like you, not with your looks or your smile or your voice or all your flaws.. call me dumb or foolish, but I only want you.”

“God,” she jokes. “I had to fall for a romantic.”

“And you’re stuck with me,” I chuckle. “Or at least until you break up with me. Until then you’ll just have to put up with the occasional bouts of tawdry, mushy monologues.”

“I’ll live,” she says, winking at me. “But why the woods? If I were you, I’d pick the sea. I love the sea. I’ll watch sunrises and sunsets and pick conch shells off the beach. I’ll dip my toes into the water, or walk the shores to feel the sand under my feet. Catch the sunlight on my face or in my cupped hands; I’ll do all these things, every day, until the heartache ebbs like the waning moon and tides.. there’s a grand beauty about the sea, something inviting and transcendent, as if you’re staring right into the very eyes of God himself.. but the woods? The woods are a maze. They shut out the open sky and cut the wind into pieces; it’s a labyrinth of greens and browns and strange noises..  you can only see fragments, like streaks of sunlight and broken clouds.”

- ‘5: Autumn, part two’, from Thirteen 2 Thirteen